Tag Archives: south Dakota fishing reports

Each fall we have started to do a father and sons fishing trip and we chose this weekend for our adventure this year. For these trips we usually like to get out of town a couple of hours to a place we can stay and have a couple of good days of fishing. We originally chose to go to Mozingo in Maryville MO but after looking through fishing reports we found there was a Bass tournament that held approximately 25 -30 boats so we decided a week before the trip to change it up. Non of us had ever been up to Yankton to fish Lewis and Clark Lake but it was very intriguing with the types of fish and size of the lake that we decided to go there.

The weather was supposed to be chilly all weekend but not very windy. However we quickly found out that on the main lake with a wind coming directly from the east that the waves could get very large! We found a ramp on the southwest side of the lake that was tucked out of the wind a little bit and had some rock jetties that we could fish around.

On Saturday we started we started at this ramp and quickly started catching some smallmouth around the rocks! The first fish we caught was a 2.5 lb smallmouth on a spinner bait. We stayed in this little area near the ramp a lot for two reasons, one we were out of the wind and protected and two we were catching fish! We tried throwing all sorts of lures but the one that seemed to work the best was shad colored deep diving crank bait. It had to be in constant contact with the bottom to get the bites and so much so that we continually got it caught in the rocks and had to retrieve the lure! So on Day one we caught about 4-5 bass 1 Norther pike and one Stripper!

The next day we decided to try the river south of the dam. After about an hour of fighting the current and hitting two sand bars we decided to pull the boat out and go back to the main lake. On the main lake again we caught a few more bass and Northern pike fishing the same pattern as the day before.. Deep diving crankbaits around whatever rocks we could find.

This is a lake a I definitely want to visit again but i would want to spend a lot of time just driving around the lake and looking at depths and structures to decide where and how to fish. If is a great lake with a lot of opportunity but I feel like in order to really be successful you would need to know that lake well. This post is picture heavy but enjoy it because we caught some good fish!

Made the trip up this weekend to visit some friends in South Dakota and Nate took me out to the lake to try for walleye. I have never been fishing exclusively for walleye before and new this would be a new experience!

We got out to the lake early and were trying to beat some storms that were supposed to come that afternoon. When we got to the lake it was very windy and there were large waves beating the shore. But in his ranger deep v boat we had no problems cutting right through them.

Once we got to our first spot we started trying to run spinners over the flats. But immediately we noticed some issues with the telling motor and the front fish finder. After a free minutes of trying to find the problem we decided to move on and try to troll crank baits along the drop off points and ledges and then along weedlines near the shore. We did this for an hour or two without even a strike so we tried a few minutes for small mouth bass but without the telling motor this was difficult too.

Since we didn’t have much luck at the lake Nate took me to a private bass pond out at Eagle Pass Ranch since we were determined to catch fish. At this pond we caught tons of 2lb bass on a worm and chatter bait and had a lot of fun.

I definitely want to come back some time and try the lake again. It was beautiful and all the reports said that the walleye and small mouth fishing was going well.

Lake ranking: 4 starThe only reason I didn’t rank it a 5 was that we couldn’t find the fish, I definitely want to try it again!